HSW314 | Social Work Field Education | A Case Study on Social Work

In this role play you are a social worker and client is homeless due to drug addiction, client became drug addicted after breakdown her relationship with her boyfriend. Then when she became drug addicted family was ignoring her. That’s why she became homeless.) Write the client story.

1. Provide a summary of the scenario as presented by the ‘client’ and your response as the social worker.

2. Explain what approach/skills/strategies you engaged as the social worker.

3. Show critical reflection of the process as the social worker. What was significant to you? What challenged you? How might you use these learnings in future practice?

Answer:

1. My name is Alex, and this is a summary of the scenario that my client is facing. My client Alisha is having facing some issues in last few days. My client Alisha is suffering from a mental breakdown due to her relationship with her boyfriend. She became a drug addict after breakdown her relationship with her boyfriend. Due to this drug addiction Alisha’s family is ignoring her and she became homeless. The scenario is pretty much complicated and it needs to be dealt carefully so that Alisha can come out of this trauma. Alisha needs to be observed carefully her actions need to be observed carefully to understand what can be done to make her come out of this drug addiction.
2. Alisha has become drug addicted due to the mental breakdown for her relationship with her boyfriend (Wise & Koob, 2014). The problem arises due to her depression. In this case I need to carefully analyse how much the incident affected her and how she can be treated so that she feel better. As the social worker my primary approach will understand her past relations, her relation with her family and what the reasons behind the recent breakdowns. She needs to be treated with care and then we need to help her by providing her carrier building sessions by which she will be able to manage her issues effectively (Kolodny et al. 2015). 
3. Drug abuse can affect her in a number of ways. Getting homeless is one of the many problems that she will be facing (Ersche et al. 2012). Her physical appearance has changes recently due to the effects of the drugs that she is using. The harmful drug addiction has affected her appearance; she became thin and has dark circles. She has reduced weight in this few days and has been suffering from depression. She also has developed heart disease due to the substance abuse. She has been highly affected by the addiction. She started this drug addiction in 2016 and has been taking all the drugs that is available in the market. The substance abuse has affected her brain and the nerve system. This information was collected after we examined her in a local hospital. Her condition has detoriated so badly that if I don’t take any steps immediately she will be highly affected and which can ultimately lead towards her death. Being a counsellor I and people around me who is trying to help her will need to understand that th8is whole procedure will take time and this we need to keep calm and behave nicely to her so that she feels comfortable with us to share her feelings. Understanding what is going in her mind is the first thing that we need to understand. Understanding her feelings for example when she is sad and when she is angry or happy is crucial to interact with her effectively. Addiction is a progressive and chronic disease; it gets worse over time if it is not treated properly. Addiction is tough to get over, but with care and time it can be cured. Having a positive conversation with the client will be the first step as it will help in building relationship and it will also make the client feel comfortable and trust the counsellor (Everitt & Robbins, 2013). It is important to drop all the expectation and focus on what the client have to say regarding her current situation. As she explained that she has been highly affected by the breakup that she had recently which led her towards depression and then she started doing all kinds of drugs. She started with marijuana and now she is in such position that she has nothing left to try. She also expressed her worries and disappointment about how she tried to stop all these addiction and how tough was for her to control those. She expressed how much she misses her family.

She needs to be given proper guidance about how she can improve her situation and how she can come out of this mess.  I need to give her proper opportunity to share everything that she wants to share. One of the most important reasons for depression is unable to share problems with others. Understanding her problems and listening to her problems will make her feel comfortable and she will feel that she is not alone. After she discusses all her problems I need to give her time and will take an open session with other drug addicts who also wants to cope up from this addiction this will help her understand their problems and this will also make her feel; the consequences of drug addiction. This open session will also help her to make friends, this will make her understand how to build relationship and will also give opportunity to share her problems with them. The next step will be informing her parents about her recovery and how she is changing herself to fit into the society. This will give a huge boost to her recovery as she will be seeing her parents after a long time and this will make her feel comfortable and her parents will also be able to take better care of her.

This helped me to learn many things about how people can be affected by such emotional breakdowns. This helped me to understand that people can change if they are willing to change. Addiction is progressive and it will only get worse with time so it needs to be treated as soon as possible. This will help my carrier as I learned many things like how to understand someone’s feelings and how I can help someone to manage her problems. This will help me in many profession as it made me understand that key is essential in the counselling process and with time everyone can heal.

References:

Ersche, K. D., Jones, P. S., Williams, G. B., Turton, A. J., Robbins, T. W., & Bullmore, E. T. (2012). Abnormal brain structure implicated in stimulant drug addiction. Science, 335(6068), 601-604.

Everitt, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2013). From the ventral to the dorsal striatum: devolving views of their roles in drug addiction. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(9), 1946-1954.

Kolodny, A., Courtwright, D. T., Hwang, C. S., Kreiner, P., Eadie, J. L., Clark, T. W., & Alexander, G. C. (2015). The prescription opioid and heroin crisis: a public health approach to an epidemic of addiction. Annual review of public health, 36, 559-574.

Wise, R. A., & Koob, G. F. (2014). The development and maintenance of drug addiction. Neuropsychopharmacology, 39(2), 254.